Title: “The Gift”
Scripture: Song of Songs 2:8-13
7/3/05 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
For a moment this morning, think about what some of your earliest messages were about sexuality. And then think a moment about how those messages were or were not associated with God.
I imagine there is quite a variety of thoughts in this group of folk.
Since I am the one in the pulpit - I'll be daring enough to share some of my memories.
One of my favorite stories is associated with my mother. I must have been in sixth grade and we were still living in Kansas, she had ordered some items in the mail in preparation for the start of my menses. In the box of items there were books about procreation. One day when we were home alone she sat me down with the first book, it was about chickens and eggs. Not long after we began my dad and brother arrived home and the book was quickly put away. Without her saying a word, I gathered that these were not the kinds of things you talked about in front of men even though, rumor had it, that at some point it involved them. Well, we never did get back to the book - not any of them. Years later I found them in my mother's drawer and I teased her that maybe it was time for us to get beyond the chicken and the egg.
Lets just say I did end up learning about these things - but not from my parents. And church? Well, lets just say that the general message was that sex was dirty but you were to save it for someone you love.
But then I also grew up during the tail end of the whole sexual revolution in our country - so that message was sort of lost in the explosion of the so-called freedom to “love the one your with”. (Which did not work so well either)
For the most part the church has been too silent on how sexuality and spirituality are deeply intertwined with each other and that is a very sad thing. Perhaps that is part of why issues like sexual orientation and marriage equality have been such hot buttons - it is forcing churches, synagogues and temples to talk about a subject we would rather ignore.
How many of you are familiar with the Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, that we read from this morning? The Song of Songs is a canticle of love between two newly wedded lovers. It is beautiful. It is a celebration of the incarnation - the presence of God in our physical selves - the joy and beauty of passion that is both sexual and spiritual at the same time.
There it is - passion - right in the canon and most of us did not know it or we tip toe around it by making it an allegory of love between God and Israel or Christ and the church. Some scholars say that the only way it was included in the canon was by seeing it as an allegory. We can't have passionate sexuality included in our religion now could we?
In the Jewish tradition the belief is that King Solomon wrote three books that are in the Bible and are under the heading of “Wisdom Literature”: The Song of Songs, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The Song of Songs is about young lustful vigor, Proverbs is the maturity of middle age and Ecclesiastes reflects the cynicism that can sometimes come with old age.
Whether Solomon actually wrote these or not, we do not know for sure. But it seems quite appropriate to include them in the canon as they reflect the human experience and our search for God in the midst of those experiences and stages of existence.
Including these wisdom books in the Bible is an affirmation that our daily lives are not separate from God - even intimate physical expression and passion are deeply connected to God and our spiritual selves. The enjoyment of sensual beauty, delighting in a delicious meal, eating chocolate, the touch of a baby's skin, listening to beautiful music, smelling sweet roses - these are all aspects of the gift from God of the incarnation - we are physical, sexual and sensate beings.
Spirituality is the lived expression of our faith - in all aspects of our physical and mental lives. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit as much as our minds and hearts are, but we as a people have not done a good job of honoring that.
It may appear to some that we live in a sexually liberal society but I believe we live in a sexually violent society. The statistics in our sexually violent culture regarding abuse, rape or sexual assault are staggering. While I find the human body a beautiful thing - the use of sex to sell things is offensive and sometimes even nauseating.
Sexual violence in our culture is a violation against the Holy Spirit. It is a violation of the gift of the incarnation and the majority of us - both in and outside of religious institutions - have personal experience with some kind of sexually related brokeness.
Prostitution, promiscuity, adultery, pedophilia, clergy sexual misconduct, patriarchal heterosexual marriage, furtive teenage sexual experimentation, “hooking up” for casual sex are violent expressions of sexuality - not liberation. These actions do not heal; they hurt, violate, and confuse.
I believe that much of the pain we experience in our sexually violent culture is because we have not done a good job of linking spirituality and sexuality together. Simply placing so-called religious rules around its expression or simply not talking about it, are not the answers either. In studying the Song of Songs it was interesting to me, but not surprising, that some authors, rather than seeing the text as a celebration of sacred love between covenanted adults, saw it as a statement from God that sacred love could only be between a husband and wife. In all the studying I did on this text, I could never find in small print anywhere: “This gift is only for a legally married husband and wife, signed - God”.
To affirm the beauty and delight in our sexuality and wed it to our spirituality is certainly not an open license that anything goes - but to specify it to a particular set of genders is but another form of sexual violence.
Writer Frederick Buechner writes: “Contrary to Mrs. Grundy, sex is not sin. Contrary to Hugh Hefner, it's not salvation either. Like nitroglycerin, it can be used either to blow up bridges or heal hearts.”
Somehow we need to direct the gift and the power of our sexuality away from blowing up bridges to the healing of hearts. Our scriptures teach us that the way to do this is to link our sexuality with our spirituality. As children of God, we are in covenant with God - our bodies as well as our hearts.
We need to wed the physical gift of our bodies with the spiritual gifts of gentleness, respect, compassion, caring and savoring. You will find all of those things in the Song of Songs, along with some playfulness and celebration too.
Theologian and Professor Phyllis Tribble believes that the Song of Songs is a reflection AND a reclaiming of God's original intent in the Garden of Eden. She believes the Song of Songs is a celebration of what God truly longs for us as sexual and spiritual beings and though “God's name is never mentioned in the text itself, God's creativity and delight saturates every verse.”
The Song of Songs is a “convincing witness that we were created physically, emotionally, and spiritually to live in love.” (Eugene Peterson) May we seek ways to live this in our covenanted relationships and to teach it openly and respectfully to our children and our children's children that they might wed their sexuality with their spirituality as God intended it to be. Amen.